Harold Bloom Quotes

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.

I guess the important thing for young writers is to read.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.

Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor.

In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.

The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

I'm not a writer. I like being a reader.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.